Welcome to justthoughtsnstuff

I started posting to jtns on 20 February 2010 with just one word, 'Mosaic'. This seemed an appropriate introduction to a blog that would juxtapose fragments of memoir and life-writing. Since 1996, I'd been coming to terms with the consequences of emotional and economic abuse that had begun in childhood, and which, amongst other things, had sought to stifle self-expression. While I'd explored some aspects of my life through fiction and, to a lesser extent, journalism, it was only in 2010 that I felt confident enough to write openly about myself. I believed this was an important part of the healing process. Yet within weeks, the final scenes of my family's fifty-year nightmare started to play themselves out and the purpose of the blog became one of survival through writing. Although some posts are about my family's suffering - most explicitly, Life-Writing Talk, with Reference to Trust: A family story - the majority are about happier subjects (including, Bampton in rural west Oxfordshire, where I live, Oxford, where I work, the seasons and the countryside, walking and cycling) and I hope that these, together with their accompanying photos, are enjoyable and positive. Note: In February 2020, on jtns' tenth birthday, I stopped posting to this blog. It is now a contained work of life-writing about ten years of my life. Frank, 21 February 2020.

New blog: morethoughtsnstuff.com.

Saturday, 17 September 2016

beautiful bindweed..., estima, how novels work, writers [on writing], trying to relax!


Another photo of a garden convolvulus flower, aka bindweed. Every time the flowers appear - apparently on the same stem - they are different. Sometimes brash, sometimes, like today, delicate.

Dug Estima spuds this morning - not a good harvest. Way less than the Desiree. Wonder what the Kestrel will be like. Probably lifting them tomorrow.

Two books on fiction arrived from Amazon yesterday - How Novels Work by John Mullan and Writers [on Writing]: Collected essays from The New York Times. The first has been out for a long while and though I have dipped into it in libraries, I've never read the whole thing. The other book I came across in the New York Public Library shop in May.

Trying to catch up after the TABS Relocation project stage two. Trying to relax a bit before the beginning of Oxford's term, which is approaching rapidly!
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